MaryLee's Healthy Food and Easy Cooking - Food Waste - Tips to Stop Wastage

Hello again,

Today in 1st world countries we tend to waste a lot of food. Why waste food? This could be because we are more affluent today so may feel we can waste what we do not want, as we have the money to do this.

Another reason is we are obsessed with sell by dates. Tend to throw away perfectly good food because it is close to its sell by date or just past. Years ago you knew when something was off, it either, looked off, smelled off or tasted off, didn’t need a date stamp to tell you this. A lot of time the food is not bad when it reaches its sell by date, it just is not as fresh as it could be, but it is still useable.

We also tend to be greedy when food shopping, buy more perishable food than able to use up therefore a lot of it goes into the trash. This is tragic.

The best way to avoid this is to plan ahead a little, acknowledge what you will use and what won’t get used and cut back on your shopping. Make out a list of what you need or want and stick to it, don’t go off track and start buying what looks or sounds good. Can always get a few extras but be careful. And don’t go shopping when you are hungry as you will overspend and buy stuff you don’t need and won’t be able to use up.

If you only do a weekly shop and you happen to know that you will be out 3 evening then don’t buy the same volume of perishable food that you do when you know you will be home 7 evening.



Analyse from previous weeks what you tend to use up and what gets ignored and then tossed. This way you don’t end up wasting what you don’t use, buy what you know you need and will use.

Then there is the issue of leftovers, what to do with them. A lot of people just do not want to bother with leftovers so they just bin what they don’t eat. Is this because when cooking meals, their eyes are bigger than their stomach and tend to make more than they can eat, or is it because they just can not judge how much to make per meal. When ordering in, do you tend to think you are hungrier than you actually are and order far more than you can possibly eat, or get carried away and want to try every dish on the menue or get all your favourites.

If you won’t eat leftover then again work it out, decide before you start how much food is needed to prepare your meal or how many dishes to order in, don’t get carried away.

Here is a general guide I tend to use when preparing my meals. Most people eat 1 medium size potato, about ½ to 1 cup of vegetables and 1 – 2 slices of meat or 1 chop/fillet per serving.

When preparing your meal if there are 4 eating then prepare 4 -5 medium potatoes cut them in half if you are boiling them, or cook just 4 if you are baking them. Prepare about 4&½ cups of vegetables, so if making more than one vegetable dish then do half and half. With the meat if it is chops, steaks or fish fillets, depending on size, it is one each, you really do not need more than 4 -6 oz of meat per serving. If it is a roast most will have 2 good size slices of meat as their serving so you can judge how big a roast you should cook, however most roast are excellent to use for sandwiches or salads the next day. When I say roast I mean roast of beef, lamb, chicken or pork.

Dry pasta it is usually a ½ cup per person or small hand full of spaghetti per person as it swells when it cooks. Most people have about 1 cup of cooked pasta/spaghetti per serving.

Rice doubles in size when cooked so if there is 2 of you eating then use 1 to 1& ½ cup of uncooked rice and this should give you the proper portion of cooked rice. Most people have ½ to 1 cup of cooked rice per serving.

Hopefully this will help prevent food wastage, or if you happen to have trouble judging how much to prepare for your meals and tend to not want to have to use leftovers.

In my next few blogs, I will provide some recipes to give you ideas on how to use your leftovers and they won’t seem like leftovers.